Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
BERNARD MALAMUDWriters who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
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Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
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I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.
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It’s one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it’s another not to be able to live by what one does know.
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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
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You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
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We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
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Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
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First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….
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As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD